The Minor Fall and the Major Lift
by Kali Cephirot
Summary: Series of drabbles, ficlets and lessthan500long Kingdom Heart I've written. Autoconclussive. Several pairings, may include yuri, yaoi, het and gen. Rating goes from K to M.
1. Step Outside My Mind Sora,Roxas

**Step Outside My Mind.**

"Do you miss him?" Sora asks, suddenly. Roxas blinks at him.

"Who?"

Sora looks at him as if he's dumb. "Axel, silly!"

"I..." Roxas looks away, a little uncomfortable.

"'cause, I mean, he said you were best friends, and you were - uh... I mean, we were so sad when we said goodbye to Pence and the guys..."

Roxas sighs. It's a little hard, he thinks, to explain things like this, when half of what he thinks and feels, he doesn't understand it. He always thought that having a heart and having his memories would fix that, not make it worse, but there are a lot of memories that aren't real and yet they exist deep inside him, there are things that no one but he knows. Now the ache inside him isn't because of a missing heart, but it aches just the same.

Perhaps, the aching was just because of missing something. Or someone. Or both.

"Roxas?"

"Yeah," he says finally. "I guess."


	2. Bad For Your Health X Larxene, Marluxia

**Bad for Your Health.**

Marluxia merely raised an eyebrow as he took notice of Larxene, laying down on the couch, a book obeing held open with one hand, and a cigarette burning in orange and gray in her other hand.

Larxene didn't took her attention away from her book, just moved her hand and got the cigarette cer lips, took a drag and kept the smoke trapped inside her mouth as she read what Marluxia assumed was a particularly interesting passage.

Only then he got close.

"Did you know smoking is bad for your health?" he asked gently, moving Larxene's hand to have the cigarette against his lips and take a drag of his own.

Larxene blew a few rings of smoke before she smiled charmingly at him, blinking slowly and mockingly sweetly.

"I've heard," she conceded, her voice still sacharine sweet. "Almost as bad as not having a heart."

Marluxia couldn't help but agree with a chuckle.


	3. Staring at the Sun X RoxasAxel

**Staring At The Sun.**

"Why wasn't Demyx sent for _this_?" Axel asks, with such a look of utter disgust that Roxas almost wants to laugh out loud. He looks like a wet cat, pushing soaking red hair out off his face, trying to walk without touching the water, muttering about how it's going to ruin his uniform. Seeing that the water here is knee-high, of course he doesn't have such luck.

"He was being sent to Agrabah," Roxas answers, despite knowing that Axel wasn't expecting one. He looks up and he smiles at how the scorching sun feels against his skin. It only takes him a moment before he's taking off the black coat, the gloves, taking off his boots and pants as he goes.

There's something in the soft sound of waves against a distant shore that calms him, at how the sun feels reflected against the water and over his skin. He'd rather carry his uniform than miss that. Or rather, make Axel carry it for him.

"Why didn't they send _us_ there! Y'know I don't mind the hea-!"

He looks over his shoulder and notices Axel staring. Roxas smiles, feeling almost amused and he shrugs before he starts walking.

"I like it."

Axel stops complaining for the whole lapse of twenty minutes after that.


	4. How to Break X Xemnas, Demyx

**How To Break.**

"No," he said, shaking his head. "NO. I wont... I won't do it! I... I don't like to fight! M-my o-" he didn't finish, didn't want to finish because if he thought too much about that, it'd mean this whole thing was real, that he... that he didn't have a heart, and it wasn't true, it just couldn't be. It was some sort of nightmare. "I won't fight!"

"But of course, dear," Xemnas - he kept repeating the name, trying to make sense of something, cling to something other than the utter silence he could feel inside his body. No music, nothing more than utter panic - said. He felt Xemnas' gloved hand against his face softly, and he was feeling so he was alive so he had to have a heart. It was that simple. "Of course I wouldn't force you to fight. Something so awful..."

"R-really?" He held unto Xemnas' arm, looking at him hopefully. Xemnas smiled softly and gave him a small nod. "B-but... that other p-person said..."

"Saïx... he can get a bit... emotional, shall we say," Xemnas kept saying in a soft-purring voice, and he felt himself relaxing slowly. This was okay. Some sort of nightmare, yeah, but he'd wake up with just the memory of a careful educated voice in a weird dream. "But of course it's okay if you don't want to fight. I wouldn't have the heart to force anyone to do something they didn't want, okay? I'm sure that you wouldn't be the right person to fight, right?"

"Y... yeah... totally the wrong guy..."

He felt himself relaxing, and he was suddenly tired, clinging to Xemnas, who smiled again, ever so softly.

"You must be exhausted," Xemnas said softly and helped him stand, put his arm around his shoulder and helped him towards a bed, helping him lay down. "We'll talk more tomorrow, and see just how we can help each other, does that seem alright?"

He nodded, already drifting towards a place where music and heartbeat where the same.


	5. Nothing To Hold Back X RoxasAxel

**Nothing To Hold Back.**

Roxas fights giving everything of him. Axel assumes it's because he lacks the memories to hold him back, but it's better than this when there's nothing but the blinding way the keyblades move, twirling on the air as Roxas ducks his chakrams, moves forward.

By the time Roxas manages to disarm him and his chakrams fly for a few seconds in a twirl of fire and heat before they fade back to darkness, Axel is hard enough that it aches.

Roxas presses a keyblade against his throat and Axel moves his head with it, grins and licks his lips, chest moving up and down. All he needs now is the beat of a heart in there.

He doesn't say that, instead his grin grows sharper, keeping his arms extended.

"Got enough, baby?"

For a second, he thinks Roxas will press the keyblade further. For another second, he thinks Roxas will move forward, over him, in him, anything. For a second, he thinks the intensity of the way Roxas is looking at him will be enough to make him come.

But in this, Roxas holds back, because he has everything to lose and the pressure of the keyblade goes away.

"For now."


	6. Could Taste Heaven X SoRiKai

**Could Taste Heaven.**

Riku is the only one of them that actually believes in fairytales, weird as it sounds.

Sora shrugs at the thought, throws another stone against the gentle lap of the waves, ankles-deep in the water, skin past bronze and starting to go red. "'_Happily ever after_' means things are done, right? And I don't like that."

If Kairi and Riku notice the sudden shadow of blond hair mixing with Sora as Sora throws another stone, neither of them say a thing.

Kairi might be a princess but she shares Sora's opinion, the tip of her rough fingertips rubbing above Riku's knees where she lies against his chest, her back warm and solid, her hair smelling of salt and sunblock lotion and her.

"I'm glad that Aurora, Belle and the others can have their fairytale," she adds. Riku wraps his arms around her waist and he feels Kairi moving to trace nothing over the skin of his wrist and he thinks he can almost feel somehow softer touch before hers. "But for me? I want more than that."

It's amazing how she can make the 'me' sound like an 'us'. Riku kisses her shoulder, then licks his lips to get rid of the sand.

When they sleep, however, Riku looks at the two hands that aren't his own resting over his stomach and chest, feels Sora's gentle snorting and the way Kairi's hair tickles his skin and he can't help but hope - as hard as he knows how - for the three of them to perhaps, _perhaps_ deserve an 'ever after' just like this, even if in no fairytale they've seen there has ever been a princess that has two knights.


	7. Chemical Reaction X RoxasRiku

**Chemical Reaction.**

Things are weird between them. Weird enough that even Sora picks up on it.

"You still mad at Riku?" He asks at the mirror. Roxas shimmers in front of him, mostly because Sora likes talking to people face to face.

It took him a while, but Roxas stopped pointing out how he wasn't, in fact, a person.

"I'm not mad," he answers, and it's the truth. He's something, but he doesn't know what it is. Having a heart doesn't help if you don't have the knowledge, and there's nothing in the memories of Sora he feels comfortable watching to describe it, nothing in his own short experiences to know just what it is.

Sora lets it rest, so Roxas wraps inside Sora again.

They're not best friends. Sora and Roxas might be linked, but that doesn't mean that Riku and Roxas become best friends too. Sora is Riku's best friend. Axel is Roxas' best friend, and he'll remain being so until they meet again.

He's not mad, he knows. He's something. It's kind of bitter and heavy and he only dwells on it when Sora is sleeping.

When he looks at Riku from within Sora's eyes, when the three of them are together, when Sora and Kairi are laughing, sometimes he finds Riku looking at Sora. Looking for him.

Roxas thinks that Riku is the same towards him. This something, whatever it is. He doesn't ask about it, not yet, not until he has a better understanding of this.

Riku doesn't ask either anyway.


	8. Twisting Your Perception Demyx

Demyx gave a heaving sigh as he called upon his sitar, looking to Xigbar and then Luxord, wondering why oh WHY they had decided that he was to have part in their practice too. There was a reason _why_ he spent most of his time in his quarters, unless the Superior had called him.

"Oh man..." he bemoaned when Xigbar laughed, stepping into nothing and going out of sight. Luxord smiled, courteous, before he called forth his cards.

Demyx noticed, however, that they weren't attacking _him_ at first. It was more like they were fighting against each other, and then the one that came out victorious was gonna turn against him.

Well, then. After another sigh, he focused on the battle, playing his sitar and calling his water clones, focusing on the rhythm of Xigbar and Luxord fighting against each other. He just had to find out the proper moment between Luxord's staccato and Xigbar's crescendo, just a moment when the two rhythms would merge and

_There._

"What the--" was the mutual exclamation. Demyx allowed himself a tiny, tiny grin as he looked up from his sitar, water clones merging and fusing to bring them towards him, even with Xigbar hanging upside down and a set of cards swimming around Luxord.

They both had forgotten that water twists the perception of both time and space.


	9. Lucky Thirteen X Roxas, Axel

When he had gone to greet the newest number of the Organization, Axel had thought that it'd go the other way around, not with the newbie pressing two fucking keyblades against his throat, blue eyes almost burning holes on him.

"C'mon, XIII," Axel grins, more amused than he's been since the time he managed to put Demyx and Larxene in the same room and watch from afar, chakrams vanishing. "I was just saying 'hi'."

The kid keeps on frowning, even as finally steps back.

"Roxas," the boy says, keyblades vanishing. "My name is Roxas."

"Roxas." Axel says, nodding. "Got it."


	10. Pictures Go Wild X Xemnas, Kairi

**Pictures Go Wild.**

Kairi doesn't remember much from Before, but what little she remembers it has always been precious to her, especially After. She collects the memories around her and builds forms with them and if most of the times these memories never make much sense, she never cared.

So she hums melodies she doesn't know the words for and she half dances with Sora or Riku dances she might once have seen, she sits by the ocean shore and draws faces and writes names that don't make any sense only for them to be washed away, and late at night as she curls underneath her covers, she remembers cool hands petting her hair or holding her hand until she fell asleep and how much she loved those hands, how they made her feel safe. There was a smile hidden somewhere there, she thinks, just before she falls into dreams of laughter and sunshine with Sora's voice and Riku's warmth.

She keeps thinking of those brief moments between awake and sleeping; cool, careful hands petting her hair when that Nobody (Saïx, according to Axel) takes her somewhere else. She's angry and perhaps a little bit scared, and try as she might, the hands holding her arms don't let go at all.

The Nobody in front of her is so tall that he towers over her, cool golden eyes and pale silver hair flowing behind him. She looks right back at him and --

_... awkward cough before he smiles a little, pulling the covers gently over her. Big hands petting her head but so carefully, as if she could break. The moonlight comes through the window and turns his hair into something out of a fairytale._

"I'm sure," that person said, golden eyes warming up. "That you'll have your 'happily ever after' one day, Princess."

--Her breath catches when the man moves a hand to touch her face, trailing the back of two fingers over the curve of her cheek, down her throat, against her collarbones. For a moment she is almost afraid that he's going to choke her but then he just moves his hand through her hair again, curls his fingers on the nape of her neck and then lets go.

Kairi doesn't fight as Saïx takes her to her jail, still trying to put order to her thoughts and her heart.

She remembers his hands.


	11. Rolled Down in Torrents X XigbarxDemyx

**Rolled Down in Torrents.**

"C'mon," Xigbar prompts him again with a grin, elbows resting on his thighs as he leans forward, so that they're real close. "What's the worse that could happen?"

As a general idea, Demyx hates that phrase because it always, always makes something bad happen out of the blue.

Still, as he thinks about it, he can't quite see what wrong would it come, if he was to agree and he and Xigbar kind of got their abilities together for that.

He lets himself sink unto the ocean, though, swim a little bit as he thinks of it. He can control the water alright, and if he wanted he could get some of his clones here, or even some Dancers. However, he can't walk on water. He could make the water harden itself into ice and then he could walk on it, but not exactly on water anyway.

He had never thought about actually doing it, though, which is why now that Xigbar mentioned it, he's got the itch to try it. And if Xigbar can help...

He finally comes out again, shaking his head out of use, Xigbar half leaning away to avoid the droplets.

"Yeah, okay," Demyx says with a shrug. "Why not."

"Excellent!"

"Just let me get my clothes and--"

"What for?" Xigbar smirks and gets close again, his grin amused and mischievous. "I'm the only one here."

And so he doubts a moment before he shrugs and then he sort of pushes inside him that seems filled with water and music and he lets it go, pushing a it so that he feels the water twirl around his legs, almost letting go when it feels as if his body is losing weight, but when he turns around he just finds Xigbar looking at him, thoroughly focused, so Demyx takes a deep breathe before he pushes and stops thinking about it, rising over the water and then he's just.

"I'm..." 

When he turns to look towards Xigbar, he finds him grinning from ear to ear.

"Go right ahead, kid," Xigbar says, and there's something in the way he's grinning that means that he's finding this amusing for other reasons. "Keep on walkin'. But tell me if you start turning water to wine, okay?"

Demyx thinks about asking again, but he isn't sure he will like the answer, so he just shrugs and tries calling forth his citar, making some of his clones dance over the waves of the sea.


End file.
